Today was kind of a weird trade show day as Globalcomm was very empty compared to past Supercomm events. The TMC booth hardly saw a soul and exhibitors were fuming. I witnessed exhibits with massive amounts of empty space.

Others complained that the hall had too many vendors. Yet another complaint was that there was no press -- what am I invisible? True I have been trying to diet lately. ;-)

The company that did best today was Cisco as their booth was in front of the entrance. In fact many of the booths in their aisle did better than the rest of the show. The booths to the right were mostly doing the complaining.

Some think tomorrow will be a much better day as this show as Supercomm was never on a Monday. I have no clue what will happen tomorrow I just know that exhibitors who typically share all with me were unhappy.

The show does deserve lots of credit for selling many booths however. I look forward to seeing Internet Telephony get as big. The challenge for this show is the attendance level. Without attendees, exhibitors aren't coming back. The word on the street by the way is that Telecom Next is dead and many think the same for this show.

I think that is too extreme and Globalcomm has a chance tomorrow to make up for today and the good will the Supercomm show has cannot erode overnight.

What I can say is that if exhibitors defect significantly next year we may be facing another Comdex situation where the show just implodes in a few years. I went to the Comdex events for over a decade and watched them implode basically overnight.

Thankfully the turnout at TMC's IMS party was great. I didn't count but we had hundreds of people. It seemed like the networking went well and it was great to catch up with old friends and make news ones.

Many people were surprised that Jeff Pulver and I were both in the same place at the same time. I am not sure why as I have been to past VONs. The funny thing is that there were some camera issues so Jeff and I were basically posing for photos for a few minutes. Perhaps people think we will never be in the same room together again?

We were really happy to have the Pulver team at our IMS party and special thanks to the IMS Forum and Siemens for helping us put on a great event.

Tomorrow the Pulver team is putting on a concert at the House of Blues. I won't be able to make it but you may want to catch it.

Disclaimer -- TMC's Internet Telephony show, IMS Expo and VoIP Demo effectively compete with Globalcomm and Telecom Next. There may be personal bias in this blog entry but I have done my best to present the facts as I saw them and exhibitor representations are actual conversations that took place.

Enjoy the photos. By the way, the thin guy between Jeff and I is Mark Spencer the founder of Digium/Asterisk.

Today was kind of a weird trade show day as Globalcomm was very empty compared to past Supercomm events. The TMC booth hardly saw a soul and exhibitors were fuming. I witnessed exhibits with massive amounts of empty space.

Others complained that the hall had too many vendors. Yet another complaint was that there was no press -- what am I invisible? True I have been trying to diet lately. ;-)

The company that did best today was Cisco as their booth was in front of the entrance. In fact many of the booths in their aisle did better than the rest of the show. The booths to the right were mostly doing the complaining.

Some think tomorrow will be a much better day as this show as Supercomm was never on a Monday. I have no clue what will happen tomorrow I just know that exhibitors who typically share all with me were unhappy.

The show does deserve lots of credit for selling many booths however. I look forward to seeing Internet Telephony get as big. The challenge for this show is the attendance level. Without attendees, exhibitors aren't coming back. The word on the street by the way is that Telecom Next is dead and many think the same for this show.

I think that is too extreme and Globalcomm has a chance tomorrow to make up for today and the good will the Supercomm show has cannot erode overnight.

What I can say is that if exhibitors defect significantly next year we may be facing another Comdex situation where the show just implodes in a few years. I went to the Comdex events for over a decade and watched them implode basically overnight.

Thankfully the turnout at TMC's IMS party was great. I didn't count but we had hundreds of people. It seemed like the networking went well and it was great to catch up with old friends and make news ones.

Many people were surprised that Jeff Pulver and I were both in the same place at the same time. I am not sure why as I have been to past VONs. The funny thing is that there were some camera issues so Jeff and I were basically posing for photos for a few minutes. Perhaps people think we will never be in the same room together again?

We were really happy to have the Pulver team at our IMS party and special thanks to the IMS Forum and Siemens for helping us put on a great event.

Tomorrow the Pulver team is putting on a concert at the House of Blues. I won't be able to make it but you may want to catch it.

Disclaimer -- TMC's Internet Telephony show, IMS Expo and VoIP Demo effectively compete with Globalcomm and Telecom Next. There may be personal bias in this blog entry but I have done my best to present the facts as I saw them and exhibitor representations are actual conversations that took place.

Enjoy the photos. By the way, the thin guy between Jeff and I is Mark Spencer the founder of Digium/Asterisk.